Bulgaria Confirms African Swine Fever Outbreak at Industrial Pig Farm
Veterinary authorities in Bulgaria reported an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) at an industrial farm with 13,000 pigs in the central village of Apriltsi, Reuters reports.
On August 18, Bulgaria's Food Safety Agency said it would cull all pigs that had been in contact with the infected animals. Officials set up a 3-km quarantine zone around the farm to stop the spread of the deadly virus disease of pigs, but is harmless to humans.
A few days earlier, a South Korea pig farm with 2,400 pigs confirmed an outbreak of ASF at a domesticated pig farm in Goseong-gun, Gangwon Province. On July 28, ASF struck even closer to home in the Dominican Republic, only a short boat or plane ride away from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.
"For years we watched as the ASF virus jumped from Africa into the Middle East, then into Europe and Russia, and most recently, into China and Southeast Asia. Almost everywhere it goes, ASF sets up shop permanently. Individual farms are successful at ASF elimination through complete depopulation, but recent examples of country-wide success stories in eradicating ASF are few and far between," Clayton Johnson, DVM, wrote in a recent Farm Journal's PORK article.
The news of ASF entering the Americas only bolsters the case for ASF prevention and preparedness efforts to continue to be prioritized and resourced, he noted.
"U.S. producers are positioned for a profitable run of pig production as long as we maintain our export market. As Germany and countless other exporters have painfully learned, industry profitability outlooks are heavily contingent upon ASF-free status," Johnson wrote.
Keep up on the latest ASF news at Farm Journal's PORK:
Philippines Says African Swine Fever Cases Waning, Sees Pork Surplus by 2023
African Swine Fever Moves Closer to Home
CBP Casts Wide Net to Assess African Swine Fever Threats to the U.S.
Oklahoma Makes Strides to Decrease Feral Swine Population
Keeping Up Our Defenses on ASF
China's Sow Herd Shrinks in July, First Decline in Almost 2 Years
